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Bit hesitant over putting this on here, as everybody seems to be levels above me and I'm nowhere near. Anyway, I'm a current student and i'm actually studying computing technologies, as opposed to design or 3D. Last year we had a 3D modelling module, this year we have MoGraph, next year is just straight computing. I'd never used a 3d application, prior to last year, so go easy on me :)
Basically I had to create an ident for a multimedia company, any of my choosing. I chose Marvel and this is what I came up with:
It hasn't been marked, just yet, but formative feedback is very promising. As it is more a computer science based course, I appreciate the bar is pretty low, compared to a 3D design oriented degree. But hey, I'm new to this and this is my first ever motion graphics attempt and I will definitely improve my skills, as and when I can.
Thanks.

Hi,
I've created an ident, similar to this
, for a uni assignment. I can't post the file as it contains 12 videos, many applied several times each and is a fairly large size, with assets. I have a problem with some of the lighting, despite using the compositing tag and also excluding objects from the light's effects. In the attached image, the silver rectangles, that make STUDIOS appear, are in a symmetry object and have a child which is a fully transparent object, the text simply has a compositing tag, disabling the "seen by transparency" option. As you can see, the light is leaking through the horizontal bar, a bit. It's 2 separate parallel spot lights, with varying colours and intensities. I've put the mask in the excluded objects, yet I still get light leaking through. Any ideas, please? I tried to sort this in AE, but the scene is not very responsive, in there.
Also, as lights don't work in a symmetry object, could I use the range mapper, in xpresso to move the duplicated lights away from the first set? Thanks

Hey, I just recently managed to get back to my PC, to test out your method. It works perfectly, I've managed to get a sub D on there, to smooth out those last few sharp edges and my mesh is predominantly quads. There are a few triangles, now, but they're not causing any issues. So, a big thanks for your advice, it's something that I will definitely remember, for future use and it has solved my issues here. Thank you.

Hi, thanks for your reply, certainly brings a better alternative to the table. I shall give that a go, later.
I did end up just splitting the cap & controlling the phong on 2 separate elements, individually. It works, it looks similar to the effect I wanted.
It's not a modelling module, it's mograph & I get some marks for modelling my own stuff, although not that many. I could have modelled it, but that is just a small part of my overall scene & time is the real enemy.
I'm definitely going to give your splines advice a go though, that definitely seems the most effective way to go, I'm still learning and somewhat of a noob, that's the great thing about this site, somebody with much more knowledge always pops up, with a proper way of doing things. So thank you, for that, you've helped to save my day.

Hi, I'm currently making an ident, for my uni assignment, due in, in just over 2 weeks. mostly it's going well. The ident is a Marvel one and i'm creating my take, on their 2016 ident, that has multiple videos playing within the space remaining from the text cut out (apologies for my rubbish terminology). It starts from 0:16, here:
I'm relatively comfortable, with the procedure to achieve this, save for encountering something I didn't foresee. My problem is on the arguably the easiest bit and relates to the phong tag. As you can see, the text is cut out, from a cube, there are bevels to most of the remaining edges, so I needed to replicate that. Booles were no good, as I need to texture the independent recessed letters, to play different clips. I tried cutting the spline, from a cube, but then bevelling caused problems, as the n-gons and triangles didn't like bevels or bevel modifiers, finally, I did this:
I drew the spline for the font.
Added a rectangle spline
Used a spline mask
extruded and applied fillet caps.
made it editable, so I can select internal polys.
The look is something like I want, with the bevel, I'm going to play around with the internal edges on the A, R and E and see if I can get those more like the actual one. Anyway, my problem is the phong shading, as I have triangle n-gons, I'm getting odd shading, on the caps, if I turn the angle right down, that is fine, but the rounding doesn't look smooth. there doesn't appear to be a sweet spot, that satisfies both. Is it possible to have 2 individual phong tags, on one object or is there an alternative?
I don't need a sub-d on this and the best solution I can think of, is splitting the front cap and deleting the old one and adjusting the phong on the new cap. I do that kind of thing too often, as I'm relatively new, but there must be a way of keeping my objects in one piece? I'll pop the file in, so you can see. Any genius solutions would be greatly appreciated, as the pressure is on, now. Cheers, guys.
Phong.c4d

That works just how I wanted it too, Thank you. I wouldn't have thought about the space station being a child of the hidden object, although now you have shown me, it makes complete sense and should have been obvious. I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Thanks, though, I appreciate that.

Hi, I'm having a little problem with the target tag. I have made a planet and a space station that orbits it, obviously the station is aligned to a spline, an ellipse, in this instance. I wanted the bottom of the space station to always face the planet's surface, for some reason I cannot seem to get it working the way I want. I placed a hidden object in the bottom of the station (as a child) and applied the tag to said hidden object, expecting it to always face the planet. This works perfectly fine with cameras and lights, but not for this.
The station's initial position was side on, so to speak, so I thought by adding a child, locked to a particular place, with the target tag applied, it would solve my problem. Any tips would be most welcome, thanks.

Does anybody know of any way I could have animated splines or something, in my scene.
It's difficult to describe, but I would like to use some already existing movie footage, in my scene. I can do to this out and import to C4D, however, I'd like some kind of control over that footage, so I could apply particles. Ultimately the video footage will be hidden from view, yet the particles will move exactly as the character did, in the original footage.
Could I create a splines of the character and these splines dynamically track all movement from the footage?
Could the shader effector be applied to video and have clones act as thinking particles, but replicate the movement.
I guess it would be similar to mocap data, in its flexibility but it would be a 2D dynamic outline of a movie character.
Let's just say it's Banner turning into the Hulk. I have particles that simulate Banner, then as he turns, the particles form the Hulk, through the full transition. So the viewer sees the shapes of the character moving, but it is made up of lots of particles.
Thanks.

Hi, it's certainly done the job you set out to do, which is similar to what I'm trying to achieve. It's looking increasingly likely that I'll need to go down that route, unless anybody else chips in with another method.
The Create Outline tool tool under the mesh> spline menu works really well, on block type fonts & then using a loft and moving the second spline seems to work. Problem being, my font is pretty complex & it's a complete mess once I attempt that or extrude inner etc.

Hi, thanks for your reply. I had considered modelling the font or at least converting it to a polygon and using the knife to cut through the center, although that seemed a bit tedious to get the central line, to achieve the bevel. I guess that could be my last resort. I could model it, which is usually my fallback method, although I'm trying to learn how to use tools that increase my productivity, as I'd like to be able to achieve results without falling back to modelling everything. Although if it is the only way, I'll certainly do that. But I've included the requested files and if you can give me some tips and I could learn a new way, that would be awesome and greatly appreciated, thanks.
I've included my basic file, the font and the image of the effect I'm trying to achieve.
waltograph (2).zip

Hi,
I'm having trouble recreating a font, with a chiseled cap. I can do this with simpler typescript type fonts, but it's so difficult with a cursive font, as I repeatedly get bead geometry when I use lofts or extrudes etc.
The font I'm using is called Waltograph and as you can guess, it's the Disney logo font. During a Disney ident, the font appears and it has the chiseled effect & I'm trying to recreate that. I've tried numerous ways and the only thing I can think of is drawing it by hand with the pen. Something I'd rather avoid, if possible.
I've tried using the create outline, but I get crossed points and that method isn't really beneficial for such a cursive font. Ideally I'd like to be able to achieve this without a plug in, as I only have a student version and it won't let me use plug ins.
I'm actually surprised at how difficult it is, I'm sure there must be a simple way, I haven't yet learned, but I'm struggling to find out what that could be. Any pointers would be great. Thank you.

Hi,
Just looking for a nudge in the right direction. I have some footage, it's Captain America, he throws his shield and it heads towards the camera. I've modelled the shield and the element the footage is displayed on, in C4D. I'm struggling to track the trajectory of the footage's shield, to my modelled shield. I've tried a few ways, with limited success, but not close to as professional as I want it to look. Let's say that the footage is being projected on to a plane, in C4D and I have a shield, at a certain point of my choosing, the shield will penetrate the plane, essentially a 3D element, leaving 2D footage. It's tracking it accurately that's a bit problematic for me, at the moment. I have Creative Cloud and have been trying to achieve this using AE with Cineware. Any pointers would be great, thank you.
I haven't included a link to the video, as it's several minutes long and not at the beginning. I'm doing this as a uni project, so I've included a still image, I have taken from the footage, for educational purposes... It's pretty much around this point I want the 3D element to come in to effect.

So, I've been going down the route of using a plane, for the cover, placing accurate cuts and then applying joints. I then check all my positions and rotations and bind the joints and use a pose morph tag. the principal works great, in that I can get the book to open and close much like a real hardback book. One thing that is puzzling me though, is the effect on rotating segments of a plane. I get a slight kink, in the book's geometry, which when I add a cloth surface, is really quite noticeable. I have 5 segments, to the cover, both faces the spine and the spine's right angled edges. The angle of the spine is slightly out, as is the spine's edge, on the top. these two segments are the segments that are now facing in the opposite direction, to their original origin and I assume the effect on the spine is also due to it being facing X as opposed to Y?
For what it is worth, this is going to be an old, magical pop up book, I could probably live with the deformation, with appropriate camera angles and lighting, but I would really like to understand what is causing the problem, so I can fix it. Any advice would be great, thanks. I've included the file, I've removed the cloth surface, to better see the effect.
Book_Cover.zip

Hi, I've been looking around on how to animate a hardback book, I've watched endless tutorials and read lots of forum posts, although none are as specific as the plan I have. Basically I'm going to create a pop up book, I know how to create the page turns and can do that to a good standard, it's fairly simple and there are several ways; however, a hardback book is presenting me with some problems. For the purposes of my project, the pages are stiff cardboard and only have a small amount of bend, I'm only going to use about 8 planes that each use a cloth surface. The book is only going to open to the middle, so 4 turns in total and I can use bones for the pop up effect,
I've been endlessly opening and closing one of my daughter's books, studying the effects of the page turn, on the spine, the remaining unopened pages and the book as a whole. opening a page of the book, pushes the spine's direction to about 300 degrees, in turn this lifts the back cover; closest to the spine up slightly, which of course raises the whole stack of unopened pages. Each subsequent page opening has varied effects on the stack of remaining pages, likely due to counter weightings. For instance, the pages themselves drop down the stack of opened pages, when every second page is opened. The book is constructed this way and just has a shiny card spanning every full 2 page spread, this is obviously glued to the thicker rigid card, below and holds the whole thing together.
How would I create a realistic effort at the effects the opening pages have on the spine and outer cover. I can tinker with the page turn effect and there's a ton of useful information on how to perfect that, but none seem to touch upon the spine and cover, bar The Monkey, who just said it caused him problems but didn't actually discuss it in depth. If anybody could point me in the right direction, that would be great. I'm aware there are a few plug ins, but I actually want to learn how to create my ideas, as opposed to using one. Thanks very much.

I see, that's kind of what I meant, with projecting him on an otherwise invisible plane. A card sounds similar, though, so I think I was barking up the right tree there.
I didn't really consider his position in relation to the glass that is travelling away from the phone, that's something I'll definitely need to consider, but hopefully I should be able adjust timing and gravity as well as the fall off of the attractor, to compensate for his position. I seriously didn't even consider that before and that's probably the most effective part, in the scene, otherwise it would look quite bad.
So, I was right with the rotoscoping? Oh the joys of rotoscoping haha. Thanks very much, you've been a massive help.